Thursday, 20 March 2014

Meet WorldView-2,
the satellite that provided Australian authorities with the images that
appear to show two objects in the Indian Ocean 2500 kilometres
south-west of Perth that may be related to missing Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370.

Launched on October 8, 2009, and owned by US satellite
company DigitalGlobe, WorldView-2 provides imagery at a resolution of
approximately 50 cm. It takes a new image of any place on earth every
1.1 days (1 day , 2 hours and 24 minutes).

The satellite, among four others that DigitalGlobe owns,
weighs 2800 kilograms, operates at an altitude of 770 kilometres, and is
able to collect nearly 1 million square kilometres of imagery every
single day, which is then distributed to those who pay for access to
DigitalGlobe's imagery.

Satellite imagery provided to AMSA of possible debris from MH370.

DigitalGlobe confirmed on Friday that it was the one who
provided the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) with the
satellite images that were captured on March 16, showing the two objects
in the Indian Ocean.

"We have been informed by an Australian government official that it
was our imagery Prime Minister Abbott referred to in his recent
comments," the company said in a statement.

"Working with our customers, DigitalGlobe continues to task
our satellites to collect imagery of a wide area that includes the
waters around where the possible debris was identified."

The satellite images released by the Department of Defence.

A clue that DigitalGlobe's satellite was used lies in the
imagery released on Thursday afternoon by AMSA to the media after its
press conference, which said that DigitalGlobe owned the copyright of
the images.

Despite this, when Australian Maritime Safety Authority's
general manager John Young took to the podium on Thursday to explain to
reporters the discovery of the images that might show pieces of MH370, he carefully omitted to tell them the source.

When asked about it, he avoided the question.

And when reporters phoned Australian defence officials to ask
the same question, they were given a firm "no comment" or "we can't
discuss".

This may seem odd, because the satellite's owners, DigitalGlobe, were only too happy to tell the media on Friday.

The contrast highlights a longstanding syndrome. Australian
officialdom is hyper protective of US intelligence and its sources -
even more protective than the Americans themselves.

It's a symptom of the Australian defence establishment's
mentality as an anxious junior ally, afraid of giving its senior partner
any reason to curtail the flow of intelligence.

A DigitalGlobe spokesmen declined to comment on whether the
debris were spotted by DigitalGlobe's own analysts or analysts
from governments that use its service, such as Australia and the US.

It couldn't have been discovered by internet users
participating in a "crowdsourcing" effort launched by the company to
help locate the plane though, as the Australian search area has not yet
been uploaded to the site, operated by DigitalGlobe and called Tomnod.

The large objects that Australian officials said were spotted
by satellite four days ago are the most promising find in days as
searchers scour a vast area for the plane.

The larger of the objects taken four days ago measured up to
24 meters long and appeared to be floating in water several thousand
metres deep, Australian officials said. The second object was about five
meters long.

The satellite company has not said if it will release imagery
that encompasses the search area off the coast of Western Australia to
the public on Tomnod.

"We're working to confirm further details," DigitalGlobe said.

"In the meantime, other customers including the US government
and other governments have been receiving our imagery for their own
search efforts."

DigitalGlobe said that the sheer number of images covering a
large swath of ocean contributed to the delay in revealing what could be
debris from the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that has been missing for
nearly a week.

"Given the extraordinary size of the current search area, the
lengthy duration of the analysis effort was to be expected," a
DigitalGlobe spokesman said.

The company's five high-resolution satellites capture more than 3 million square kilometers of earth imagery each day.

"This volume of imagery is far too vast to search through in real time without an idea of where to look," the spokesman said.

A number of Australian government agencies pay DigitalGlobe
for access to imagery generated by their satellites, including the
Australian Antarctic Division and Geoscience Australia.

Tender documents show that Geoscience Australia alone has
paid DigitalGlobe almost $1 million since July, 2012, for satellite
imagery over Wide Bay in Queensland and of imagery over the Great
Barrier Reef.

It's not clear though through tender documents if Australian
intelligence agencies and Defence also pay for access to DigitalGlobe's
imagery, as Fairfax was unable to find contracts between them and
DigitalGlobe.

DigitalGlobe said no conclusions have been reached about the
origins of the objects shown in the imagery near Australia, and it was
not aware that any subsequent search missions that have been able to
locate them.

"But the experience again demonstrates the unparalleled
geographic reach and persistence that satellite imagery provides for
critical government missions and emergency response situations," it
said.

It's unclear if DigitalGlobe has any restrictions placed upon
it by the US government concerning who it shares its satellite imagery
with.

The Chinese icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow
Dragon, awaits orders for the search of missing Malaysia Airlines
flight MH370 at the port of Perth, a southwestern port city of
Australia, March 20, 2014. Xuelong will set off to the waters where
suspected debris of the missing flight MH370 has been found, according
to the State Oceanic Administration of China. (Xinhua/Tang Zhijian)

Bad weather hampered the search for any signs of the missing MH370
Thursday, after Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot announced there
were credible satellite images of at least two large unknown objects in
the southern Indian Oc...

1 comment:

When Chinese satellite spotted the images earlier, countries except China, don’t bother to send their airplanes and ships to search the area.

However, when DigitalGlobe Inc, a Colorado-based company that collects imagery for the US government and other countries as well as private companies spotted the object on Mar 16, Aussies claimed as their credible findings and Australia vows indefinite search to encourage other countries also come and join Australia to make big bucks despite the finding objects in the pictures might not be related to the missing MH370.